It is hard to believe that none of this rubbed off on the shapers of Vedic thought as it continued to develop, for by the time the Āraṇyakas shade into the Upaniṣads (from about 800 B.C.E.), renunciation of the world in a way strongly reminiscent of the sĀamaṇa ideal becomes an important feature of the Upaniṣadic outlook. Perhaps, then, the name ‘Āraṇyaka’ had something to do with the practice of strict bodily and mental discipline in secluded places, which brought about an increasingly internalized dimension to the sacrificial ritual through the attempt to establish and control the ‘connections’ mentioned earlier by an esoteric wisdom; this became a characteristic feature even of the Upaniṣads, though the Upaniṣads take this process of internalized wisdom further.
Where the śramaṇa tradition originated is not clear. Perhaps it arose from the Indus civilization discussed earlier (irrespective of whether this civilization embraced Vedic culture or not); perhaps, in the shorter term, it was a reaction from within against the arrogation of privilege and the control of the sacrificial ritual and its fruits by members of the Brahmin elite. After all, the Ŗk and Atharva Saṃhitās make reference to kinds of ascetic called Keśins and Vrātyas. The Keśins are mysterious figures who sought the company of the deva Rudra in order to experience what seems to be a drug-induced ecstasy; this was also supposed to give them special paranormal powers. The Vrātyas were also ascetically inclined, but they appear to have been a more militant body of men who lived on the margins of Vedic society, their militant lifestyle reflecting an inner, disciplined struggle to subdue the passions.5 These groups of ascetics may well have fed into or influenced the development of the śramaṇa way of life which itself was not homogeneous, but since the śramaṇa s won the respect of an increasingly urbanized and therefore religiously more independent-minded population, their ideals may well have been incorporated by the Brahmins (adapters of tradition par excellence) into the growing tendency of the later Vedic texts to interiorize the meaning of the śrauta ritual. As in the case of the earlier textual genres of the Veda, the Āranṇyakas, with their various recensions, were also classified into the four Vedic streams, thus maintaining the ordered development of the sacred canon. We shall mention some names, again not exhaustively, in due course.
And so to the Upaniṣads, the concluding, and most well-known, category of the Vedic canon. Some have referred to the Upaniṣads as the ‘philosophical’ section of the Vedas. If by ‘philosophical’ one understands a systematic, coherent body of knowledge, derived from inferential argument based on an analysis of experience, then these ancient texts are not ‘philosophical’. In that case, one cannot criticize them for having a plurality of views that are not always mutually compatible, for being mystical and therefore non-rational in places, or for being didactic, that is, bent on teaching and instruction. The nature of philosophy in the modern Western sense is to be a form of public knowledge, its rational credentials available to the scrutiny of all. But the Upaniṣads, which ask questions and offer answers on the origins of the universe and the production of being, on the nature of human existence and its goals, the relationship between beings and the source of being etc., attempt this task by continuing the Vedic tradition of private instruction based on personal initiation and passed down from teacher to disciple, by exploring perceived hidden correspondences between the human microcosm and the cosmic macrocosm, by plumbing the depths and searching the heights of conscious experience, by interiorizing the solemn ritual still further and understanding the role of speech and speech-acts in this process, by giving instruction about the good life, by offering teaching about the mystery of death and the after-life, by trying to unify inner and outer being. They are a plural and pluralistic exercise in solving the conundrums of existence for the initiated; they are not systematic philosophical treatises. Nor can they be described as ‘speculative’ as is sometimes asserted; at least not from their point of view. They generally profess to give accredited insights based on experience and inquiry (whether one accept these or not); they do not claim to be guesswork. This is one reason why they exerted, and still exert, an unparalleled authority among large sections of the Hindu tradition, once their secretive teachings were recorded for posterity and opened up to an increasingly wider public.
Their originally somewhat reticent nature emerges from various explanations given as to what the term ‘upaniṣads’ means.
Upaniṣad means ‘connection’ or ‘equivalence’ [between two or more things, in more than one realm of existence]. In addition, the term implies hierarchy; the Upaniṣadic connections are hierarchically arranged, and the quest is to discover the reality that stands at the summit of this hierarchically interconnected universe. It is, however, assumed that such connections are always hidden ... Because of the hidden nature of these connections, the term upaniṣad also came to mean a secret, especially secret knowledge or doctrine. It is probably as an extension of this meaning that the term came finally to be used with reference to entire texts containing such secret doctrines, that is, our Upaniṣads.
(Olivelle 1996:lii–liii)
The great ninth-century C.E. Hindu theologian Śarnkara, who came from south India, gave a different but conceptually associated etymology of the term. ‘[The] knowledge of brahman is expressed by the word upaniṣad, because it completely dissipates this world of provisional reality and its cause for those who are devoted to it, for the [root] sad prefixed by upa and ni has this meaning; and from this meaning the books [containing this teaching] are also called “Upaniṣad”’.6 So for Śaṃkara the main task of the Upaniṣads is to reveal the teaching about attaining brahman and dissolving this world of false reality in which we live. This knowledge is learned by sitting (sad) with, or approaching (upa-ni), a competent teacher.
Śaṃkara cuts to the chase. He overlooks all the other teachings of the Upaniṣads in giving this definition – the etymologies, the homologies, the cosmogonies or myths about the origin of the world and its creatures, the competitive word-play and puzzle-solving that the discoursers of the Upaniṣads were engaged in, the description of the worlds of mystical and post-mortem experience, the advocacy of renunciation etc. – and affirms that their primary task is to teach about the reality that is Brahman, ‘the Great’ (from bṛh, to grow large). We have heard of brahman before, from the Brāhmaṇs, from discourse about the sacrificial utterance and its inner, effective, transformative power that the śrauta or solemn ritual can deploy at the hands and mouths of the priests.
By the time of the Upaniṣads, Brahman is the highest unitive principle of reality, the ground of being, knowing which, as the Taittirīya Upaniṣad declares (2.1.1), ‘one attains the highest. For he who knows brahman as reality, knowledge, the infinite, as that which is placed in the cave [of the heart] and the highest heaven, achieves all desires together with brahman, the Knowing One’. ‘That from which these beings [food, life, sight, hearing, mind, speech] are produced’, continues the upaniṣad, ‘by which once produced they live, and into which when passing they finally enter – seek to know That, that is brahman!’ (3.1.1). The numinous personae or divinities, the matrix of connections, are not abandoned. But they have become subservient, in a hierarchy of being, to the highest principle of unity, which is Brahman, and to know them in their proper perspective, is to be led to a knowledge of Brahman.7
One's inner self or atman is swept up into this process. By now, atman does not mean primarily the visible self, or body, as it did in the earlier sections of the Veda, but the innermost reality of the individual, the subtle essence. It is also an appellation, in the Upaniṣads, of the supreme unitive reality within all being(s). There is a famous teaching in the Chandogya Upaniṣad which brings this out (6.1.1–6.16.3). The arrogant young Brahmin, Śvetaketu, has just returned home after having studied ‘all the Vedas’ for 12 years with his teachers. He thinks he knows it all. When his father inquires if he asked for that instruction ‘by which the Unheard becomes heard [through the sacred word], the Unthough
t becomes thought, the Unknown becomes known’, Śvetaketu replies, ‘How can there be such an instruction, Sir?’ His father now provides the instruction (in other words, the Upaniṣad professes to complete the teaching of the Vedas). The father teaches that ‘just as by one lump of clay everything consisting of clay may be known, the shaped [clay] object being [known by] a label of speech, a name given [to it], the truth being that [the object] is still clay’ (6.1.4), so the one Being that existed alone in the beginning proliferated into the names and forms (nāma-rupa) of all beings (6.2.1–6.7.6). This Being is the ‘root’ (mula) of all creatures or lesser beings (prājah), their ‘resting-place’ or ‘home’ (āyatana), their ‘support’ (pratiṣṣhā; 6.8.4). The father then drives home the instruction again and again (6.8.7–6.16.3) by saying: ‘This most subtle Being that is the Self of all this, that Self, that Being, that you are, Śvetaketu!’. All beings have this Self as their subtle, inner reality, their root, their resting-place, their support. But as we have seen, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad has declared that it is Brahman who is the source, the abode, the end of all being; thus, ultimately, the Atman or Self of all is also Brahman.
Brahman thus stands at the summit of the hierarchical scheme, or at the bottom as the ultimate foundation of all things, although it is important to remember that the concept always retains its verbal character as the sound expression’ of truth or reality. The final Upaniṣad or equation is between Atman, the essential I, and Brahman, the ultimate real.
(Olivelle 1996:lvi)
Understanding this equation – and the Hindu thinkers who followed understood it in different theological ways – granted mokṣa or liberation from this world of sorrows, a return to the Source. In some Upaniṣads it is implied that this supreme One is personal, and that liberation consists in blissful communion with this Being; other Upaniṣads seem to speak of a complete loss of self in this One as the goal. It is this ambiguity that has generated interpretive variety among the later theologians about the nature of mokṣa or final liberation.
In any case, how to achieve mokṣa? The Upaniṣads recommend a discipline of self-denial, of control of the senses, as the path to the knowledge that brings mokṣa. We have seen that this teaching was gaining ground already in the Brāhmaṇ and Āraṇyakas. For those who formally renounced the world, this entailed the practice of austerities and celibacy – but here we have only one ideal promulgated in the Upaniṣads. It is spoken of famously in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka upaniṣad (4.4.22):
He who is the Controller of all, the Lord of all, the Ruler of all, lies in this space within the heart ... He is the separating boundary to keep these worlds apart. It is him the Brahmins seek to know by reciting the Veda, by the sacrifice, by giving, by austerity and fasting. Having known him one becomes a silent ascetic; desiring him as their world the itinerant ascetics wander about. Those who knew this in the past did not want offspring. ‘What will we do with offspring?’ they said, ‘We who possess this Self, this world!’ So having given up desires for sons, for wealth and for worlds [of enjoyment], they follow the life of a mendicant.
Yet there are texts that indicate that one can appreciate life in the world, without being of the world. The short Iśa Upaniṣad starts with the following instruction: ‘All of this [around us] is for the Lord to dwell in, whatever moves in this world. Make use of it after you've given it up. Do not covet the wealth of anyone else. One may seek to live for a hundred years just doing works in this world. The karma [of actions] does not stick to one if this is how it is with you here, and not otherwise’. The teaching of karma and rebirth has already come to the fore. By striving to act selflessly, one does not build up the attaching traces of action that force one to return through rebirth to transient existence, and at death one attains mokṣa. In a subsequent chapter we shall see how other texts of the Upaniṣads show an appreciation of the beauty of the world. This life can be properly enjoyed only when it is not lived through selfish attachment, whether one is a wandering mendicant or not.
As you might expect, there was a major and influential trend in Hinduism, once the Vedic canon had been established, to regard the final Upaniṣadic portion of this canon as the acme of the Veda's saving wisdom. For people who followed this trend, if one understood and adhered to the teaching of the Upaniṣads, one could achieve well-being in this life and in due course salvation in the next. In this view the Upaniṣads were called the Vedānta, ‘the end of the Veda’. ‘End’ was usually understood in two senses, viz. as the ‘final portion’, and as the ‘culmination’ of Vedic insight. But we find that the boundaries between the upaniṣads as a distinct type of text and the earlier portions of the Veda are not always clear-cut; in the body of the Veda some of the upaniṣads are located before texts deemed to be Āraṇyakas, others appear to be the result of somewhat artificial distinctions.
Now, do not read the following couple of paragraphs. They may not be very important if you are not interested in details of how the Upaniṣads developed as texts (besides, you may find you have to grit your teeth to cope with the names).
The classification of the Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads followed the procedure of the Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇs, that is, they were inserted into the four Vedic streams. Thus the Aitareya AraṇYaka, the Aitareya Upaniṣad and the later Kauṣītakī AraṇYaka and Kauṣītakī Upaniṣad belong to the Ŗg Veda. Both these Upaniṣads are basically prose compositions (ca. seventh to sixth centuries B.C.E.). But note, the Aitareya Upaniṣad is embedded between chapters of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, so, notwithstanding a possibly shared dating, there goes the expectation that the upaniṣad is textually always posterior to the Āraṇyaka! The Bṛhadāraṇyaka upaniṣad, from which we have quoted, belongs to the branch of the Bright Yajur Veda, and is a prose composite of araṇyaka and Upaniṣad, as its name, ‘Brhad-aranyaka-Upaniṣad’, indicates. As noted earlier, it forms part of the last section of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and like the Brāhmaṇ, exists in the two recensions named earlier. In the main, the Bṣhadāraṇyaka upaniṣad contains some of the earliest Upaniṣadic material (ca. eighth century B.C.E.?). The Taittirīya Upaniṣad, an early prose Upaniṣad, forms Sections 7–9 of the Taittirīya Araṇyaka, which belongs to the DaŖk Yajur Veda. The Mahanarayanna Upaniṣad, a latish metrical Upaniṣad, comprises Section 10 of the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka. The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, another latish verse Upaniṣad (ca. second century B.C.E.), also belongs to this branch.8
The metrical Kaṭha Upaniṣad, earlier than the SvetŚāśvatara, is part of the tradition of the DaŖk Yajur Veda too, but the short metrical Isa upaniṣad, from which we have also quoted, is located as the last section of the Yajur Veda's Vajasaneyi (Bright) Saṃhitā, thus confounding again any expectation that the upaniṣad should be found only after the Brāhmaṇ and Āraṇyaka sections! We are speaking of textual location here, not of date. The Isa is dated more or less in the period of the Kaṭha. Two other, later, verse Upaniṣads, sometimes quoted as authoritative by the ‘classical’ theologians (viz. those who helped establish an important tradition of Hindu theology from about the seventh century C.E. to about the fifteenth century C.E.), the Maitrī (or Maitrāyaṇīya) and the Subāla, also belong to the Yajur Veda, the former to the DaŖk and the latter to the Bright tradition.
The oldest Upaniṣad of the Sama Veda is the long and important Chāndogya (more or less as old as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka). It is a prose composition and comprises the last two sections of the Chāndogya Brāhmaṇ, which runs to ten sections in all. A. B. Keith points out that ‘the first two sections of the [ Chāndogya upaniṣad] are of the Āranṇyaka type, but as with texts attached to the Sāmaveda, generally do not bear that name’ (1925/1970:499). The Kena Upaniṣad, partly in verse, and perhaps slightly older than the Kaṭha, belongs to the Jaiminīya or Talavakāra Brāhmaṇ of the Sāma Veda. Finally, the later Muṇḍaka (verse), Praśna, Māḍūkya, and Jābāla Upaniṣads (the last three in prose), belong to the Atharva Veda. The Praśna and Mā
ḍū ddukya have been dated to about the beginning of the Common Era. Most of the Upaniṣads, even the older ones, contain verses or passages that speak or hint of the Supreme Reality in personal terms, and give the impression of a latent theism (see some of the quotations from the Upaniṣads given earlier). This may well have reflected more popular forms of worship. We shall see later that – there is evidence to suggest that this had been established a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era – strong practices and beliefs of devotional (mono-)theism had developed in the Hindu tradition.
Now that you have read the forbidden paragraphs, they should do nicely to convince you that the position of some of the Upaniṣads in the Vedic corpus does not conform to an orderly textual progression, i.e. first the Saṃhitā, then the Brāhmaṇ(s), then the Araṇyaka(s), and finally the Upaniṣad. The Upaniṣads are not always located at the textual ‘end’ of their branch of Vedic progression. Further, the names of the texts given in these paragraphs, though not exhaustive, may come in useful in later reading for purposes of relative chronology and identification of text or concept in one context or another. They also comprise a list of virtually all the ‘authoritative’, non-sectarian upaniṣads referred to, or commentated upon, by Hindus in some of the most influential religious discourses undertaken in the tradition from classical times to the present day.9
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 10